Lionel Asbo

By turns outrageous and touching, an exuberant Dickensian satire of crime, celebrity, and modern culture from "one of the most gifted novelists of his generation” ( TIME ) “One of Amis’s funniest novels.” — The New Yorker Des Pepperdine is a boy out of place. He lives on the thirty-third floor of a London housing project; while his peers pick fights, Des retreats to the public library. What’s more, Des’s uncle and guardian, Lionel Asbo, is one of the most notorious petty criminals in the ci